Empty Squares and Missing Food Festivals: the Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Italian Rural Communities: a Reflection

What does an empty square mean for the future of a rural community? This question has been buzzing in my head since spring 2020 when my country, Italy, entered its first lockdown period due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I am an economic anthropologist. Since the mid-2000s my research has focused on the development of local communities in rural areas of Italy. Specifically, I have been investigating the role played by folk food festivals, the so-called sagre, using ethnographic research in north-western Italy, an area often studied by anthropologists to understand the transformations of the relationship between urban and rural centres, as well as the area of the country where sagre are most frequent and widespread.